14 DAY TRIAL // With how much fuss IT players have been raising about data center and server energy efficiency, one would think that they already have something to show for it, but this is not the case.
Organizations like Seagate's Cloud Builder Alliance are rather recent really, and the servers and systems reputed to waste little power haven't actually replaced any of the old data centers yet.
Knowing this, The New York Times tried to find out just how much of the energy eaten by data centers actually saw any use.
The result, a percentage of under 10%, isn't impressive in the least.
Indeed, online companies usually run their facilities at full power, and they waste a lot of power even at the best of times. The worst offenders waste 90% or more.
In theory, replacing them isn't complicated, even if time consuming. Unfortunately, risks with anything new is not advised for systems that rely on uptime, and it doesn't help that data center locations are often a secret. The hardware can be a bother too, if it is proprietary and custom designed.
Nevertheless, there is no alternative but to change the hardware on a global level, and we hope the process won't take too many years.